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Further Reports From The Front Lines In The War Against E-Mail

MONDAY JULY 9 2007 4:00 AM

Submitted by seanbonner. Edited By erin_broadley.

TAGS: email, communication, efficiency, IM,

Back in April I mentioned a new-ish idea for breaking free from the chains of e-mail slavery that I'd just seen talked about at the Web 2.0 Expo. For people who deal with e-mail all day long this is a pretty interesting and exciting idea, for people who don't, well, it probably isn't. The general idea consisted of two steps: 1) Set up autoresponders on all of your e-mail accounts saying you are checking e-mail infrequently and 2) Actually check your e-mail infrequently. There's more to it than that of course but that initial spark set me and several other people on a holy grail like quest to put a working model of this into practice.

A little preface here, prior to April it was not uncommon for me to receive over 1000 e-mails a day, a solid 800 or so of which were expecting some kind of a reply. I'd start checking my e-mail first thing in the morning and I'd get new e-mails before I could respond to the unanswered ones. Hours would go by and my inbox would get bigger, not smaller. Upon further investigation I realized that the bulk of this was conversations I was having with people over e-mail. It would start off simple enough with a general question or some bit of info I needed, I'd reply, they'd respond to my reply, then I'd do the same and that would continue on for hours. For the record e-mail is hands down the most inefficient way to have a conversation with someone -- 50 back and forths later we'd finish up a discussion that could have happened in a matter of minutes via some other communication method.

Figuring that out was a big step for me, as simply not checking e-mail wasn't really an option due to the fact that so much of my work and daily activity requires interaction with other people -- the trick then became how to push those e-mail conversations into another platform. Right about this same time Tantek started working on a master set of communication protocols to try and determine what works and what doesn't. I used this as a springboard and created a public "preferred means of contact" that I started asking everyone to reference before contacting me. I looked at this much like a river overflow system -- I wanted to be sure the flood was directed through these channels before I built a dam in the river. Once all of that made sense I added the autoresponders and stopped responding to e-mail that didn't specifically require me to do so.

This might sound crazy, but it's actually working. At last count I was getting under 100 e-mails day now, but that's decreasing and I'd venture to say I'm closer to 50 at this point. But the key here is that I'm not any less productive and I'm not missing any conversations -- I'm just having them in a few minutes via IM or phone rather than multi-hour e-mail threads. This of course is the main goal, freeing up more time which I've definitely done. An interesting side effect I'm seeing is that this is spreading. I've heard from more than a few people that after seeing how this was working with me they attempted their own version of this with fantastic results. I'm very close to getting a friend to introduce a "no interoffice e-mail discussions" policy requiring his employees to instead use IM for the bulk of questions and answers that takes place at his company on a daly basis.

This isn't to say e-mail doesn't have it's place. It's great for reference or as a dump for sending large files, but as far as actually connecting with someone it's about as bad as it gets. (And don't get my started on services that e-mail you to tell you that you have new mail... actually maybe I'll talk about that next week) I'm definitely encouraging everyone to take a look at their own set up and see what forms of communication work and which don't, as well as soliciting feedback on my constantly evolving system. I'm fully convinced that e-mail is the problem, it's just the default people are resting on, as soon as a better option comes along there won't be much resistance to using it.

9 Comments

rabidrabbit

United Kingdom

April 2006

JUL 09, 2007 04:54 AM

Sounds interesting in theory, but the idea of sending that kind of message to senior management and my staff fills me with dread.

Senior management would tell me to answer my emails more often and my staff would want to know why I'm ignoring them.

We do use IM and face to face meetings, but ultimately email makes it a lot easier to communicate if people are in different places or you need to get across a point that needs a long explanation.

I did however read an interesting point in a Project Management book by Richard Newton which is having the BCC and CC functions removed from email so that any emails sent are only going to those people who need to see them.

Sexdwarf

Hermosa Beach, CA

February 2003

JUL 09, 2007 08:22 AM

I'm totally not one of these people, as soon as I signed up for my first email account ever (sexdwarf83@hotmail.com, now defunct) as soon as someone tried to converse through it I simply responded, "this is not what email is for, I'm not checking this throughout the day. Do you carry out discussion vie snail mail?" Simple.

But kudos to you seanbonner, kill email conversations.

IDGAS

Jackson Heights, NY

March 2004

JUL 09, 2007 08:32 AM

My rules for dealing with email

Returning from vacation
First sort sender and delete all corporate bs announcements and crap from HR.

Next delete everything sent by folks who have never sent anything useful before - trust me they did not start.

Finally delete everything sent or labeled un the subject line URGENT. The problem either has been resolved - it was urgent after all or you will soon receive a current update on the problem - than you will go out and fix it.

This should remove 90 percent of the contents of your inbox.

Day to day
Set up rules to auto delete the corporate crap and to file current project emails - read them later. Get yourself off of as many distribution lists as possible.

Not rules but these folks violate the unwritten rule of Do Not Send Inbox Filling Garbage!
Do not reply all to request removal from a distribution list!

Do not reply all to say thank you!
(You people should be at the top of the list for the next round of cost cutting or human sacrifices.)

Do not reply all to provide an update that is only meaningful to a few people - I do not give a shit if your documents have been added to the project folder!

seanbonner

NEWSWIRE

Los Angeles, CA

JUL 09, 2007 09:05 AM

rabitrabbit - but that the whole point here - you aren't ignoring anyone and sr. management won't be able to complain because you are more productive than the people who are living in their e-mail boxes. In the office case I'm working on, everyone was skeptical but after a few trials even the biggest skeptics had to admit that more work got done without e-mail.

Gerry_D

Los Angeles, CA

May 2003

JUL 09, 2007 10:45 AM

man, it's only worse now that I'm gettable on a mobile.

i do have a separate email account for old friends and spam, and anytime I have to enter an email into a website it's and old yahoo one that I have - any business is through a gmail that gets checked more frequently

good stuff

joker_

Windsor, CA

October 2005

JUL 09, 2007 11:19 AM

I used to really dislike people that would use email as a conversational tool, Strange coincidence, but they were the same people that would use voicemail as a conversational tool, and call the agenda-less meetings that would go on forever without any purpose.
The simple rule I would employ when I worked in a situation where emails were constantly assaulting me is: if it looked like a conversation was required, call them. It looks like things are improving.

Greybeard

Los Angeles, CA

December 2006

JUL 09, 2007 11:47 AM

I hope you have a spam filter ahead of your auto-responder. If not, it will be signaling the spam-bots that they found a valid eMail address.

seanbonner

NEWSWIRE

Los Angeles, CA

JUL 09, 2007 11:59 AM

Google actually *claims* their autoresponders look like bounces which tell the spam-bots that the address is invalid. Who knows though...

ignisfatuus

I'm lost

January 2007

JUL 10, 2007 07:22 AM

i find that email is sometimes the preferable form of communication as you can better formulate your thoughts through being able to take it slow and edit what you say. always found this more useful than the phone when i was doing support for a tech company. and, of course, some people you don't want to share your im sn or phone number with because they'll just pester you more. but for the most part these days, most of my interactions happen via im or message boards. im is most convenient because you have a constant connection with someone yet don't have to respond immediately as you'd have to if you were on the phone.

the one situation where you can't avoid email is when time zones or schedules make it impossible to connect any other way. even if the conversation is in the form of short statements/questions going back-and-forth that would normally be better in a phone or im conversation.